Parag Khannahttp://paragkhanna.com
Mon, 23 Mar 2015 12:00:56 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Long Live Lee Kuan Yew’s Lion Cityhttp://paragkhanna.com/long-live-lee-kuan-yews-lion-city/
http://paragkhanna.com/long-live-lee-kuan-yews-lion-city/#commentsSun, 22 Mar 2015 23:53:04 +0000http://paragkhanna.com/?p=3683Foreign Policy | 23 March 2015
Singapore's long time leader has passed, but his ideas will live on in the country he created.

Singapore’s long time leader has passed, but his ideas will live on in the country he created.

Henry Kissinger called him one of the “asymmetries of history.” Margaret Thatcher said “he was never wrong.” Barack Obama called him “one of the legendary figures of Asia.” Tony Blair said he was “the smartest leader I ever met.” Samuel Huntington said he was one of the “master builders” of the 20th century.

What more can be said about Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding father, who passed away on March 23? Simple: He will be one of the most admired leaders of the 21st century as well.

Lee would surely regret not having survived just a few more months to witness Singapore’s 50th anniversary celebrations this August. But he can rest in peace knowing that the country he led from 1959 to 1990 is the world’s most successful post-colonial nation. Gulf monarchies are laden with bling but vulnerable to wars, coups, and falling oil prices. Africa needs another half-century to heal its colonial scars. India is only beginning to get its act together. Meanwhile, Singapore has grown from having a per capita GDP of $516 in 1965 to about $55,000 today.

Singapore long since stopped comparing itself to its post-colonial peers. It is at or near the top of global league tables of competitiveness, livability, innovation, and other metrics — more on par with Switzerland than Saudi Arabia. Recently, a Western journalist newly arrived in Singapore on assignment let out a slow whistle after a few weeks of imbibing the city’s seamless efficiency, its legendary cleanliness, and its blend of skyscrapers and beaches. “Modernity now begins in the East and flows west,” he mused to me over a drink. I have noticed the same over the past two years since locating myself in the de facto capital of Asia, a surprisingly liveable city — and one from which I can hop on a plane and reach 4 billion people within a four-hour flight radius. (Disclosure: I have been, but am not presently, a paid advisor to various Singaporean government agencies and companies.)

At the time of Singapore’s independence — first from the United Kingdom in 1963, and then from Malaysia in 1965 — there were few models for the system Lee eventually built. In the 1950s and ’60s, Lee traveled from Sri Lanka to Jamaica looking for success stories of former British colonies to emulate. Fortunately, he chose different models instead: He decided to study the Netherlands’ urban planning and land reclamation, and the oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell’s management structure and scenario-led strategy-making. Singapore, it is often joked, is the world’s best-run company. Lee is the reason why.

The Asian way is thought to consist of borrowing and bettering. Lee did a fair bit of that, such as adapting Israel’s military conscription. But he also oversaw original and innovative policies that spread from Singapore outwards: Electronic road pricing, a system to reduce congestion, is now used in London and Stockholm, while Estonia and South Korea have created their own versions of the SingPass digital identification and online services portal to access government data and services.

Singapore has one of the world’s highest ratios of millionaires per capita. While income inequality remains high, Singaporeans born in the bottom income quintile are nearly twice as likely as Americans to rise to the top income quintile. Columbia University economics professor Joseph Stiglitz made a splash in 2013 by writing about how the United States needs Singapore-style affordable public housing and a robust pension system.

Lee also made Singapore the second-safest large city in the world after Tokyo, as ranked by the Economist Intelligence Unit. “Law and order” has it backwards, according to Lee. Order first, then law. For Lee, of course, order meant both public safety and political predictability. Trained as a lawyer at Cambridge, Lee didn’t hesitate to intimidate would-be rivals who stepped into the political arena — authors, professors, journalists, lawyers, and other critics — making sure they wound up bankrupt, in jail, or both. While the Western media focused on draconian punishments for chewing gum and graffiti, Lee meted out worse to political opponents like Chee Soon Juan and J.B. Jeyaretnam.

Lee was stubborn, but not afraid to change course. From socialism to libertarianism, he flip-flopped pragmatically until the country found a model that works: a freewheeling nanny state. He believed that one cannot be afraid of contradictions in a complex world. “I always tried to be correct, not politically correct,” goes another of his memorable aphorisms.

Even if Lee found it hard to let go of power — first to Goh Chok Tong, who served as prime minister from 1990 to 2004, and then to Goh’s replacement (and Lee’s son), current prime minister Lee Hsien Loong — he would prefer the world focus on this system rather than himself. Indeed, it only mattered whether you think Lee was a strongman or a visionary (or both) while he was alive. Now the yardstick is not personality but institutions. Lee Kuan Yew-ism, not Lee Kuan Yew. This is why the 21st century belongs to him more than to icons of Western democracy like Thomas Jefferson or even Jean Monnet, the founding father of the European Union.

The 20th century was a world of rival great-power blocks, while the 21st century is one of hundreds of autonomous city-states and provinces. Approximately 150 countries have populations of less than 10 million people. For inspiration, their leaders look to Silicon Valley, Dubai, and Singapore, not Washington, Brussels, or Beijing.

China’s then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping famously launched the Shenzhen special economic zone after visiting Singapore in 1978, kicking off more than three decades of uninterrupted Chinese modernization. Since then, Singapore itself has been helping to build and govern many of these industrial clusters across China. Indian officials recruited Singapore to help realize Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign to build 100 “smart cities.” In this century of urbanization, the world’s two largest countries want to be sovereign collections of prosperous Singapore-like cities.

Then there is governance. Even without mocking the ad-hocery that Western governments have degenerated into, it is clear that the West could benefit from more technocracy and less of what passes for contemporary democracy. For that, too, Singapore had the solution: data-driven governance and a meritocratic civil service.

Singapore’s civil service is like a spiral staircase: On each rung, civil servants manage a different portfolio in a different agency, building a broad knowledge base and gaining firsthand experience. By contrast, American politics is like an elevator: One can get in on the bottom floor and go straight to the top, missing all the learning in between. Constant consultation with the population — before, during, and after elections — and measuring progress with key performance indicators are Singapore’s hallmarks. Policy, not politics.

Today, the country’s leadership is building an adaptive model I call the “info-state,” governed by a blend of data and democracy. The former is embodied in the country’s “smart nation” strategy, which puts every citizen service, from pensions to taxes, at one’s mobile fingertips.

The latter is a work in progress. In 2011, Lee the younger’s People’s Action Party nearly lost the popular vote, while retaining a majority in parliament. In 2016, voters may double down on the push for political diversity. Much is made of Singapore’s low rankings in “happiness” surveys. The truth is that Singaporeans are as happy as any other society — but they are never satisfied. As contradictory as their founding father, Singaporean youth are complaining perfectionists and ambitious slackers. Lee was a creative problem solver in a world that’s growing steadily more complex. The next generation of Singaporeans will need more like Lee — if the country is to remain as iconic as he was.

]]>http://paragkhanna.com/long-live-lee-kuan-yews-lion-city/feed/0Why China’s Premier is making a rare showing in Davoshttp://paragkhanna.com/chinas-premier-making-rare-showing-davos/
http://paragkhanna.com/chinas-premier-making-rare-showing-davos/#commentsTue, 20 Jan 2015 07:57:16 +0000http://paragkhanna.com/?p=3671CNBC.com | 20 January 2015
By Ansuya Harjani
In a rarity for Chinese leaders, Premier Li Keqiang will attend the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos later this week, joining 40 other heads of state and government including François Hollande and Angela Merkel.

In a rarity for Chinese leaders, Premier Li Keqiang will attend the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos later this week, joining 40 other heads of state and government including François Hollande and Angela Merkel.

This is the first time a Chinese leader is attending WEF Davos in five years, according to state-run Xinhua news agency. Li last attended the annual meeting as a vice premier in 2010. “The [Chinese] new president is sufficiently well-established now, so it’s appropriate for the prime minister to attend a gathering that sets the agenda for the business year – a year in which the fall in oil prices and the slowing of growth create great uncertainties,” Colin Chapman, founder and editor-in-chief of think-tank Australian and ASEAN Strategies, told CNBC.

Also, with China hosting its own “Summer Davos” held in September, top level contact is essential in order to ensure attendance by political and business leaders. The Summer Davos is held annually in either Tianjin or Dalian. The world’s movers and shakers will meet in the Swiss Ski resort town over January 21-24, to discuss the main economic and social challenges in the “New Global Context.”

Li is expected to deliver a keynote speech on January 21 on the state of China’s economy and its “new normal” of slower, yet more sustainable growth.

To-do list

Public relations to deal-making are on the agenda, says Parag Khanna, senior fellow at the New America Foundation. “As the global pendulum swung in recent years towards fearing Chinese assertiveness… China has embarked on a multi-pronged charm offensive, so Davos fits perfectly into that strategy,” Khanna, who is also a WEF Young Global Leader, told CNBC.

In addition, Davos presents the perfect opportunity for Chinese leaders to meet corporate leaders and discuss business. “China is more confident at home than outsiders realize. Chinese outbound capital flows are surging as it expands its FDI [foreign direct investment] portfolio across sectors and regions. Davos is perhaps the best one-stop shop for Chinese leaders to entertain potential investments,” he said.

In 2014, China’s outbound FDI totaled $102.9 billion, piercing through the $100 billion mark for the first time and almost on par with inbound investment at $119.6 billion.

Also on the agenda will be securing funding for the Beijing-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is set to begin operations later this year. “It needs to raise capital, if it is to work. Switzerland is a good place to do that, especially with most of the world’s top bankers at Davos,” said Chapman.

The AIIB is multilateral development bank with the purpose to provide finance to infrastructure projects in the Asia-Pacific region. “They want the world to know that they are thinking development, not solely focused on the South China Sea.”

]]>http://paragkhanna.com/chinas-premier-making-rare-showing-davos/feed/0The fragmentation of powerhttp://paragkhanna.com/fragmentation-power-irreversible/
http://paragkhanna.com/fragmentation-power-irreversible/#commentsFri, 16 Jan 2015 10:23:16 +0000http://paragkhanna.com/?p=3665The European | 16 January 2015
The end of the nation-state as we know it: Parag Khanna discusses the path towards global connectivity and why we have to shift from Western history to global history.

The end of the nation-state as we know it: Parag Khanna discusses the path towards global connectivity and why we have to shift from Western history to global history.

Interview with Martin Eiermann

The European: Mr. Khanna, especially in Europe, we’re witnessing a resurgence of regionalist or nationalist thinking that seems to cast doubt upon the aspirations of the last several decades. Is the post-crisis frustration in Europe foreshadowing a larger turn away from the project of globalization?

Parag Khanna: No conversation about the future of Europe should be seen as indicative of the future of globalization. That’s the worst kind of Eurocentrism. Globalization has long eclipsed its North American and European anchors – we no longer live in the world of 19th century colonialism. There are very important Western foundations to globalization, from international financial institutions that grew out of postwar attempts at regulating economies at the international level to Western multinational corporations that began to pursue globalization in the 1960s and 1970s. We can give adequate recognition to the role that the West has played in integrating the world economy, but it would be crudely anachronistic to see European trends – whether they are characterized by fragmentation or unification – as reflective of global trends. From a macro-historical perspective, you have to shift from Western history to global history. That’s the initial point of departure for any assessment of globalization.

The European: Last year, the “Guardian” published an article series on global borders that noted the construction of more than 6000 miles of border fences during the last decade, from Morocco to Korea. Isn’t that a pretty clear sign of the global affirmation of demarcation and fortification?

Khanna: Let me make a philosophical point first: There’s a notion that more independence movements and struggles for autonomy are somehow the antithesis of globalization – what Samuel Huntington would have called post-national globalism, or what we might describe as a Davos-inspired conception of globalization. I believe that the reality is very different.

The European: In what way?
Khanna: First, most of those borders are physical rather than economic: Many important forces aren’t constrained by them. Second, secessionist movements are part of the natural evolutionary path towards a connected global civilization. The reason is this: When regions or cities seek an alternative future, it speaks to their perceived need and capacity to escape from the imposed prison of nationhood. Third, those sentiments aren’t a new phenomenon but were present in Great Britain or Spain throughout history. In Italy, too: Right in the middle of the Crimean crisis, the city of Venice held an unofficial referendum to secede from Italy. Finally, it’s important to point out that for every mile of border fence that we put up in the world, we put up multiple miles of cross-border infrastructure: railways, pipelines, cables, bridges, tunnels, et cetera.

“The world is spending more money on infrastructure than on military”

The European: In other words: As long as our conception of the world is focused on political borders, we’re bound to under-estimate the extent of cross-border dynamics?

Khanna: The world is now spending more GDP money on infrastructure than on military spending. That’s a very rare phenomenon, historically speaking, and it has only been true for the last three or four years. Today, about 2.4 percent of global GDP – equal to around 1.75 trillion US dollars – are spent on the military. Estimates for investments in infrastructure range from 2.5 trillion to 4 trillion US dollars. We’re spending a lot of money to build cities or to fix old infrastructure, and some of that is cross-border infrastructure. It enables connectivity, which leads to a growing capacity of sub-state entities to shape their own relations with the world. Their relations no longer have to be filtered through the nation-state. The notion that this amounts to nothing but tribalism and nationalist retrenchment is a complete misreading of what’s going on.

The European: I want to go back to your point about connectivity: The big shifts in international exchange are still negotiated at the level of the nation-state: Free-trade agreements between governments, sanctions imposed by a country or by the United Nations against another country.

Khanna: The more small entities you have in the world, the less autarky any single entity can have. There are many ways to factually demonstrate this, but here’s one: The number of countries in the world that are food importers has steadily increased, and the amount of imported food is actually growing in many instances. Let’s take China: Five years ago, the country imported zero beef. In 2013, it imported 500,000 tons. When I wake up and read that Vladimir Putin is going to ban food imports from a number of countries, it represents merely a lone data point in the opposite direction. It won’t last long, and it is certainly not indicative of a larger trend. We are building a global and connected world by way of having more devolution and autonomy.

The European: You’re confronting two debates: First, is the age of nation-states really over? Second, is the paradigmatic model of globalization predicated on supra-national entities or sub-national networks?
Khanna: These debates aren’t mutually exclusive. We are, in fact, creating more nation-states by breaking up large multiethnic states: Kosovo, Kurdistan, South Sudan, East Timor, et cetera. The number of countries in the world has increased dramatically since World War II, so the Wilsonian project continues to this day. At the same time, we see driving forces that cannot be mapped onto the nation-state: technological change, communication technologies, infrastructural underpinnings of global connectivity. The nation-state doesn’t have to disappear in order for the sub-state to transcend it. Those are two different trends that are happening at the same time, and while they must not lead to the end of the nation-state, they certainly lead to a more complex and layered system.

The European: Where political scientists might see a multipolar world, you see a world that is primarily characterized by the multiplicity of networked organizational forms.

Khanna: There’s a whole body of work around ideas like multi-actor systems, heteropolarity, world society, et cetera. There’s a whole range of scientific and pop culture terms that speaks to the impact of this kind of thinking.

The European: One of the criticisms of economic globalization hinges on the radical diffusion of power: If power exists in networked exchanges instead of institutionalized forms, how can it be contested? And it seems to me that your argument opens up a possible response: Power might be diffused through a network, but it still flows through very concrete nodes, e.g. through cities.

Khanna: Entropy is absolutely endogenous to my argument; it’s the bedrock. The fragmentation of power is irreversible and inevitable. We can already see it on the level of political geography: The number of states has increased, and the fragmentation of states shows no signs of slowing down. That’s one symptom of the larger trend towards devolution. Another symptom is the transfer of power to non-state actors, from large multinational corporations to NGOs and terrorist organizations.

The European: You have invoked the Middle Ages as a historical period that foreshadowed the paradigms of globalization. How?

Khanna: The analogy operates on several levels. The first goes back to the idea of a global history: When you are looking for a period with powerful non-Western actors, you have to go back to before the Portuguese empire. You have to look at the Song dynasty in China, for example, or at the Caliphates or at the Holy Roman Empire, which was in many ways the weakest actor of the three. The second dimension has to do with connectivity and the commercial revolution in the 12th and 13th centuries. Up until the advent of the plague, cross-border trade was becoming increasingly habituated across Eurasia. Obviously there had been trade relations between different civilizations before, but they had never been as endemic. There’s a Eurocentric view that sees the first wave of globalization occurring in the late 19th century when European nations traded within their respective empires; the view that “the sun never set on the British empire”. But that’s an incorrect view: The British empire wasn’t really a global phenomenon but a vertically integrated structure without distributions of power. Global diversity in the 1900s was actually much lower than 700 years prior. The third dimension of the analogy has to do with the multi-actor world of the Middle Ages. It was a pre-Westphalian world without nation-states in which power was concentrated in cities, merchant guilds, the papacy, mercenary bands and many other kinds of actors. They each had a kind of diplomatic autonomy. Today, we’re witnessing a similar diversity of actors.

The European: If we look for a constellation of driving forces, which ones stand out? Military engagement? The quest for new markets? Technological change?

Khanna: We are seeing the effects of confluence of trends with separate drivers that are all coming together on a global level. If I had to pinpoint a few things, I would list global economic integration, communications technologies, and infrastructure. And we should not underestimate the role of big data: There’s a strong movement in the US that originally intended to leverage open data to make Washington more efficient. But its most significant impact lies elsewhere. The centralization of governance has always been highly dependent on control over information. Big data and transparency make information available to everyone in real time. Washington no longer holds that information monopoly. So while big data hasn’t necessarily improved efficiency in Washington, it has empowered cities like Sacramento and New York. They can look at the data and say, “how can we keep more of our tax revenue locally instead of sending it to Washington?”

“People want to spend money on local projects first”

The European: You hear very similar arguments in Catalonia: Advocates of autonomy criticize transfer payments from their economically strong region to poorer rural regions of Spain.

Khanna: In the Venetian declaration of secession from Italy, they explicitly said: “We pay eight euros to Rome for every five euros we receive. Being part of Italy is a bad deal.” For centuries, it was impossible to get such an accurate reading of financial data. In Scotland, you see demands for a certain share of oil revenues from the North Sea in exchange for continued allegiance to Great Britain. You can hear and see similar arguments in Western Canada or Western Australia. These are all liberal Western democracies that appear unified – but beneath the surface, they are anything but! People want to spend money on local projects first, and then give only the remaining pennies to the central government. If you’re not paying attention to those tensions, you are merely living in a theoretical la-la-land where you see the nation-state as the only anchor of identity.

The European: If you are worried about global inequality, shouldn’t this trend be highly worrisome? Arguably, one of the most powerful aspects of the nation-state is the solidaristic appeal to a national or ethnic community that isn’t merely bound together in contractual economic fashion. If new communities are organized around economic potency alone, the gap between rich and poor cities and regions is likely to grow quite dramatically.

Khanna: Exactly, it’s a cost-benefit approach to life and to geo-politics. It spells disaster for inefficient states – but I think that’s a good thing. Before it becomes a threat, it becomes a competitive dynamic that is going to spur improvements in the quality of governance. Could it lead to secessions and civil war? Yes. But it’s first and foremost a dynamic that prevents complacent, monopolistic, rent-seeking behavior.

]]>http://paragkhanna.com/fragmentation-power-irreversible/feed/0Corporations and the New Medicishttp://paragkhanna.com/corporations-new-medicis/
http://paragkhanna.com/corporations-new-medicis/#commentsFri, 09 Jan 2015 08:53:02 +0000http://paragkhanna.com/?p=3661Fall 2014 | Ogilvy Do
Parag Khanna sits down with Natalie Lyall of Ogilvy to discuss the growing role of business in governance - and the historical parallels it evokes.

“We grabbed a smartphone and a couple of moments with inspirational economist and advisor to world leaders, Parag Khanna. His CV alone is enough to make Rhodes Scholars look like underachievers. He draws parallels between today’s Corporate Statesmen and the Renaissance House of Medici. He touches on modern diplomacy, urban identity and leveraging corporate resources for the common good.”

]]>http://paragkhanna.com/corporations-new-medicis/feed/0The Future of Globalizationhttp://paragkhanna.com/future-globalization-barcelona-smart-cities-expo/
http://paragkhanna.com/future-globalization-barcelona-smart-cities-expo/#commentsThu, 08 Jan 2015 13:46:27 +0000http://paragkhanna.com/?p=3657November 19, 2014 | Barcelona, Spain
At the Barcelona Smart Cities Expo World Congress, Parag Khanna delivers a keynote speech on the role of cities in the history and future of globalization. He is introduced by Michael Lake, CEO of Leading Cities.

At the Barcelona Smart Cities Expo World Congress, Parag Khanna delivers a keynote speech on the role of cities in the history and future of globalization. He is introduced by Michael Lake, CEO of Leading Cities.

]]>http://paragkhanna.com/economist-innovation-debate/feed/0Maps as the Keys to the Worldhttp://paragkhanna.com/maps-keys-world/
http://paragkhanna.com/maps-keys-world/#commentsFri, 28 Nov 2014 11:33:01 +0000http://paragkhanna.com/?p=3625Catalan TV | 24 November 2014
What are the events that are drawing the map of the world in the 21st century? Catalan TV interviews Parag Khanna after his keynote speech at the Barcelona Smart Cities Expo in November 2014.

Kirkenes, Norway — During the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Finnmark region and the 200th year celebration of the Norwegian Constitution, Pikene på Broen presents a Transborder Café devoted to the question of freedom.

Transborder Café (TC) is an informal concept, a theme based think tank which brings together experts by involving the audience in an open discussion related to current political and cultural issues enriched with contributions by artists, politicians and researchers.

In the inaugural episode of Channel News Asia’s “Future Forward” series, host Asha Gill speaks with experts on architecture, urban planning, and technology to explore some of the leading “smart city” strategies around the world, especially Singapore.